


Dreams of the Heart

by flipflop_diva



Category: The Giver Series - Lois Lowry
Genre: Dreams, Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-18 12:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11874543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: Sometimes he dreamed about them both, about who they both became and where they both might be now.





	Dreams of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaraJaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaraJaye/gifts).



> Written for the Fic Corner 2017 exchange.
> 
> Which brings me to a confession. I actually saw SaraJaye's prompt before signups for the fest were finished, so I signed up to offer The Giver even though I had never read it, in hopes that I'd get her. And I did! I was super excited, and I loved the book, and I had so much fun imagining what came next. I really hope you enjoy!

The first thing that changed when he got to Elsewhere were the dreams. Gone were the nights when he didn’t dream. Now, he dreamed all the time. Lucid, vivid landscapes full of memories of his past and present and somethings of neither.

He dreamed about Fiona all the time. Always in color. Always like he had seen her those last few months before he had escaped. 

The red of her hair, the dark of her eyes, the paleness of her skin.

He dreamed about what it would be like to actually be with her, to hold her in his arms, to feel her body pressed against his, to have her warm breath on his neck, to have her long hair tickling his arms. He dreamed about kissing her, about pressing his mouth to hers, about sliding his hands down her body.

He always woke up with a smile on his lips but an ache in his belly. He knew now — had known for a while — what it was. Regret. For something that had never been. For something that never could have been. Sameness never would have allowed it.

Other nights, when he fell into bed, he didn’t dream about her. He dreamed about him. About Asher. About the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the way his body shook when he let loose an exclamation of joy.

Just like with Fiona, he dreamed about what it would be like to actually be with Asher, to have his body underneath him in bed, to stroke his hands along Asher’s arms and down his torso to his thighs, to press his lips to Asher’s mouth, to his neck, his chest.

Sometimes he dreamed about them both, about being between them, about loving them in the most expressive way he could imagine.

The dreams had bothered him at first. Before he had left his Community, he had understood love. But he knew in his memories of Elsewhere that families were two, a man and a woman. How could he dream something that was not possible?

But the people here, in Elsewhere — even if Elsewhere had a real name that he never called it — they just smiled at him when he confessed his dream. He liked talking to them. On mornings, down at the _coffee shop_ they called it, people talked, and he talked too. 

He told them about his dreams and they smiled.

“You can love anyone you want,” they would tell him, and he felt better, like maybe his dreams were okay. Even if they still hurt his heart.

He loved his new life in Elsewhere. For the most part. It was nothing like he had ever known, but it was more than he could have hoped for. There was no such thing as Sameness here. They hated Sameness. They wanted Differences.

He loved that. Loved. He loved things now. And so did other people. They loved and they hated. They were lonely and they were sad. They were exhilarated and they were ecstatic. They struggled and they failed.

Sometimes there was so much pain. But there was also so much love.

He belonged here, Jonas knew. They both did. Him and Gabriel.

Gabe had grown up since they left the Community. Here, in Elsewhere, there were no Ceremonies of Aging. But there were such things as birth days.

People gave him one, and they gave Gabe one, too. The first year they had been in Elsewhere, the little girl next door had given Gabe a present on his birth day. 

“That’s what you do,” she had said. 

Gabe had ripped open the thin, shiny paper the box had been covered with, to reveal a comfort object inside. A dog. Just like the real dog that they saw at the house on their way into town.

Gabe had grown into a curious little boy, now eight years old, and as curious as Jonah had ever been. But Gabe was lucky — he was allowed to ask questions and touch items and experience things he had never done. No one thought he was rude or impolite.

Together, Gabe and Jonas had made friends. Friends who expressed feelings and cared about each other. Who cared about him and Gabe. Friends who helped him make a home back when he was a scared boy, half frozen on a sled. Friends who helped him care for Gabe, helped him get a job at the restaurant that was on the way to Gabe’s school.

It was menial and ordinary and boring. He wrote down food the people wanted, and then he brought it to them.

But it was also oddly calming and peaceful. Each hour of dullness a reminder of how things used to be, of how they could have always been if he hadn’t escaped. Each person in the diner had a choice of food to eat. Each person in the diner had a choice of what outfit they wore. And even Jonas himself had choices — the blue pen or the black, this table first or that.

Sometimes, though, when he thought about his new life — even though it had been so many years by now — he grew sad. Remembering Fiona. Remembering Asher. Wondering where they were and how they turned out. Wondering what memories the Community had shared and if they blamed him for his betrayal. 

Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly sad or nostalgic, he would walk back to the hill he and Gabe had almost died on — they had been almost frozen solid when the old gatekeeper of Elsewhere had found them and sent up a cry for help — and he would start to climb, on foot, for hours, higher and higher, until he approached the peak, until he could see down into the other side, could see back along the road they had once traveled.

He couldn’t see the Community from his new home, not even from the highest tip of the tallest peak, not even if the tallest peak had been twice as high, but he could imagine it out there on the horizon. He could almost see the identical roads and the identical houses and he imagined the people he used to know painting them colors while wearing clothes they had picked out themselves — shades of reds and blues and greens and purples.

He thought Fiona would look good in green, Asher in blue. 

He thought about Lily and her stuffed elephant, and he imagined how, if he ever saw her again, he would like to take her to the zoo in the faraway town that had one — people in Elsewhere had told him once it existed — just to see her expression.

On those days, when he was feeling particularly sad or nostalgic, after he would climb the hill, he would stand there on the peak for hours and he would stare out at the world and he would imagine how things could be, until the sadness faded and the nostalgia grew less sharp, and then he would turn around, make his way slowly home and take in his new home, his new friends, Gabe running in the streets, laughing and happy and alive, and he would know once more he had made the right decision. Even if sometimes he felt like a piece of him was missing, like maybe he had left it behind the night they escaped.

•••

The knock came on his door early one frosty December morning, just three days before Christmas, when Gabriel was nine years old.

He stumbled down the short hall of their little home, wiping the sleep from his eyes, before opening his door, expecting his neighbor who always asked to borrow sugar and then made him some lovely pastries in return.

He never expected to see _them_. He blinked in shock for a few seconds, too stunned to say a word. 

There they stood, bundled in jackets and mittens and scarves, a bit of trepidation mixed with excitement on their faces.

Short red tendrils peeked out from her cap. His nose was bright pink in the frosty morning.

“Jonas?” she said, and he could hear the way her voice wavered, like maybe she was afraid she had found the wrong house.

He didn’t answer, just stepped forward to embrace them both at the same time, suddenly laughing and crying, unable to talk until a tug on his nightshirt drew him away from their warm embrace.

“Jonas?” Gabe asked, eyes wide. “Who are they?”

•••

They moved in to the little home that was now much too small for four people. They didn’t talk much about the weeks or the months or the years after he left, about the process of learning to feel, but he could tell that his and the Giver’s plan had worked.

He watched Fiona’s face when she played games with Gabe, saw the compassion that crossed it when the boy tripped and fell and she comforted him, saw the joy when he made her laugh. And he watched Asher’s face when he watched Fiona, saw the way he was looking at her that would have been taken away up by a pill if things had never changed.

And then one night he saw the way that Asher was looking at him, and then he saw the way that Fiona was looking at Asher and the way she was looking at him, and he knew.

He held out his hands, drew them with him, into his bedroom and into his bed.

“This is what life was meant to be,” he whispered to them as he kissed them, and they kissed him back, and later that night, when they finally all came together, drawn together by their Stirrings and crying out one by one with feelings of such intense pleasure none of them could ever have possibly been prepared for, Jonas realized that what he was feeling was happiness. Real, true happiness. 

And just like that, the last piece of the puzzle of his life finally fell into place.


End file.
